This invention relates to the field of inventory management and more specifically, to a technique of automatically reconciling asset information, especially physical asset information which has been compiled through a physical or automatic discovery technique.
Large organizations often have trouble keeping track of their assets. The assets are purchased and deployed throughout the organization and then become increasingly difficult to account for. Accounting of these assets is necessary to maintain compliance with regard to leases, material financial impact of the assets, and software license compliance among other things.
Often times, an organization will rely on the information that is stored in their financial system. However, this rarely reflects the real world of assets that are actually deployed within the organization. This information lacks the impact of events, such as asset disposal, unrecorded sales, theft, and so forth. Increasingly, organizations are deploying asset tracking (i.e., physical or automatic discovery) mechanisms that can retrieve the actual asset information as it is utilized in the organization. Typically, the asset tracking data varies from the information stored in the financial system, and it is desirable to reconcile any discrepancies.
Organizations want to take the information that comes from the physical discovery and reconcile it back to their financial system. Especially in a large organization, there are potentially a very large number of discrepancies to check and reconcile. This task is potentially very burdensome and time consuming. And in the time it takes to perform a reconciliation, more changes in the asset information may have occurred.
Therefore, there is a need for a technique of automating the reconciliation of discrepancies in asset attribute values.